Young & Beautiful

shrill, and both Niall and Zayn’s eyebrows shoot into the air. Which is unnecessary.
“He didn’t mean to be rude to you, Lou.”
Louis feels a flush overcome his body. His spinal cord tingles.
“But he was. End of story.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Louis shoots a sharp eye at him. “Don’t act like a bloody superhero, Zayn. You couldn’t even
take care of your own boyfriend last night.”
At that, Zayn actually scowls, his glare machete-sharp and positively venomous. “Liam’s capable
of taking care of himself. I’m not his keeper,” his softly dangerous voice breathes, and the slits of
his eyes make incisions in Louis’ eyes, cheeks, neck. “I love him and I’ll always be there for him
to the best of my abilities. But I don’t own him and he can do what he wants, can’t he.”
Louis squirms, blinking away his guilt as he burrows deeper within his nest. He’s never really
disagreed with Zayn before.
Quite frankly, it’s terrifying. And Louis feels very much in the wrong.
“I’m being a dick right now,” he mutters. He glances at Zayn. “Aren’t I?”
Zayn nods.
“You’re being a cunt, that’s what you’re being,” Niall’s boisterous voice announces through a
waterfall of thick smoke, ending on a cough.
Zayn nods again, but a smile twitches at the corner of his lips.
“You flirt, you,” Louis says witheringly in Niall’s direction.
He shrugs in response.
“Look,” Louis sighs, attempting to sit up and free himself of his blanket burrito. He lays his arms
on top of the blankets, bare and cold now, fiddling with stray hems and fabric. “I know that you
said I need to be patient with Harry, yeah?”
Zayn nods, his eyes continuing to make tiny incisions in Louis.
“But, like, that can only be an excuse for so long. You know? Like, sometimes, yeah, I have to
take into account that he’s not as, shall we say, equipped to deal with certain situations. But when
does that start just becoming an excuse? Every time he fucks up, I’ve got to chalk it up to him just
being the wounded soldier, while I take all the shit? I’ve got to accept all he does and just sit back
and wait for it to get better? Is that what you think I should do, Zayn?”
“Not at all.”
“Exactly! So, like, last night? I’m done. I’m done, mate. We were getting on fine—wonderfully,
even—and he’d basically agreed to let me cohost the party and we had an all right day, okay? It
was an all right day—more than all right, actually. And everything was just…really good, and
then he went and acted like a tit and fucked it all up and now I’m just…” Louis fades, unsure of
where to go with that. He briefly considers mentioning Harry’s journal and the quote, pick at
Zayn’s brain to find out what that means, what any of this means, but the selfish parts of him (the